


Why Dorian Stays

by WingsOfFire13



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluffy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I am the worst, M/M, but you people still read it so i guess thats okay, please enjoy it has a happy ending i swear, semi-graphic depictions of violence, sorry im a sucker for drama, why do i keep hurting my babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 02:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7134518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingsOfFire13/pseuds/WingsOfFire13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I was playing DA:I today and I was trying to find Collete and some Hakkonite jerk decided to hit me with his giant maul hammer-thing and send me flying off the walkway it took me FOREVER to find onto the basin floor below, and that just sounded like too good of a story to pass up (even though Adelin somehow only lost like. two stacks of health and fell like fourty feet but whatever) so here is me being cruel to my babies because I am a terrible person who is a sucker for these two but also a sucker for moments like this so idk</p><p>enjoy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Dorian Stays

Everything was fine. Everything was going smoothly, just as normal as always.

Well.

Normal for the Inquisitor, two of his most trusted friends and his lover, that is.

They were wandering through the Frostback Basin. Adelin and Dorian were idly bickering over the fact that Dorian never seemed to stay the night with Adelin, and Bull and Cole were pretending to be otherwise occupied woolgathering.

Everything was fine.

A small group of Hakkonite archers and warriors had surprised them- they were walking across some sort of ruined bridge or giant tree root, trying to find their way to Colette and having some difficulty finding a way inside the old Tevinter fortress.

Everything was fine.

Adelin used his chain lightning to make short work of anyone who was- or wasn’t- wearing armor on the opposing team. Dorian threw up a wall of flames between the two mages and the melee fighters- giving Cole and Bull something to jump behind if they needed to escape any shadowy daggers. Bull, of course, had rushed in head-first and knocked down two archers and a warrior. The second warrior was about to slice across his back, but Cole was there in a flash, a blur of blonde hair and silver blades. Cole and Bull seemed as though they had this fight handled. But then all of a sudden more Hakkonites had swarmed up like ants from somewhere below them- Dorian moved to the other side of his fire wall to try and get a better angle on the archer that had nearly clipped him a moment ago. Adelin waited for the enemy Avvar to get into a group as they came closer to where Bull was just pulling his warhammer back out of the ground, then dropped a Static Cage on as many of them as he could.

He didn’t quite catch them all- a rogue and one of those Bruisers with the giant mauls made it through. The rogue vanished almost instantly, and Cole followed suit- probably trying to out sneak the other one. It was obvious that the rogue would come for Iron Bull- he was the biggest one in their group, after all.

Which was precisely why everyone was surprised when it was Dorian who suddenly cried out. Dorian, who was standing right next to Adelin, who could only manage a shocked  _ “NO!” _ before growling and sending every bit of magic he had directly at the rogue. His Static Cage spell broke and released the remaining Hakkonites unto Bull and Cole.

Dorian stood back up no problem- just a small cut that had gotten in between his armor but not all the way through the extra padding and plate that Adelin always insisted he wear. The two moved a bit farther apart- spacing themselves out so that they wouldn’t be such an easy target the next time.

Bull and Cole were never far from each other on the battlefield, but when Cole slipped into the shadows he could be a bit harder to track for the sake of throwing up Barriers. Dorian threw one up over Bull and Adelin gave a Barrier to Cole the next time he appeared- between the four of them, even with the reinforcements the Avvar would not last long. Or at least they would have, had that Bruiser from before not gone unnoticed long enough that he charged Adelin.

Dorian had his own problems, trying to get an archer to stop shooting at him and a persistent warrior out of his face when it happened.

Adelin cast a Lightning Barrage, pummeling the Bruiser with bolts of energy that barely seemed to phase him. When he came in too close for comfort Adelin struck him with a singular lightning strike and then cast a shroud made of the Fade over himself, sneaking out from where the giant had cornered him with the ease of any rogue.

But the Avvar was just a bit faster than the elf had thought, regaining movement before Adelin could get past one of his massive arms. That arm had reached down and grabbed the Inquisitor’s coat collar as if he were some misbehaving child and hoisted him up into the air. His staff fell to the ground and all three of his friends vaguely registered a yelp before the brute’s hand cut Adelin’s voice off with a hand around his throat.

In a panic, Adlin wrapped his smaller, thinner fingers around the Avvar’s wrist, kicking out with his legs and pushing whatever magic he had in him directly into the warrior’s arm. That definitely had an effect if the shout of pain was any indicator, but the warrior simply slammed Adelin’s head into the tree he had previously been trying  _ not  _ to get cornered into until his magic dissipated.

“Boss!” Bull yelled, which is what really got everyone’s attention. He gave a yell that was obviously meant to try and get more people to attack him- and many of the remaining Avvar took the bait, but several more tried to aid the Bruiser by coming at Dorian or moving closer to their ally so that they could counter Cole when next he appeared. Adelin might have been killed right then and there had Dorian not had the clarity of mind to cast a Haste spell- Adelin was still pinned in place by the massive hand around his throat but it gave Cole just the time he needed to sink several of his daggers into weak points in the armor of those who had tried to defend the Bruiser. Bull was finally rid of the last of his own adversaries and used the Haste to rush to his friend’s side. Dorian ruthlessly stabbed the blade on the end of his staff into the throat of the man in front of him and burned the last archer he could reach to a crisp- the only one left now was the Bruiser.

Dorian felt an almost animal sense of smug rage when he thought about how the three of them would tear the barbarian apart for hurting his  _ amatus _ and then briefly wondered if that thought process had been a result of being in the south for so long.

But the spell broke and everything was suddenly moving too fast again- The Avvar had thrown Adelin directly at Cole and the boy had managed to both catch their leader and stay standing, which was impressive if only because despite his lanky looks Adelin was quite heavy- but then that great maul was swinging through the air, ripping Cole and Adelin apart and sending the elf flying.

He was rolling like a discarded doll directly for the edge, fingers weakly digging into the dirt to try and stop his momentum, gasping for breath and blood dripping down the side of his mouth and his head throbbing. He managed to stop himself just a few feet from the edge, unable to draw more air into his lungs despite his relief. He vaguely registered that Dorian was moving towards him. Cole was on the ground, not moving but definitely still breathing. He couldn’t see Bull but he was willing to bet money that the Qunari was about to obliterate that Bruiser’s face. Dorian was sitting him up and holding a potion to his lips, but he had forgotten to uncork it and Adelin chuckled- or tried to- despite himself.

What none of them had seemed to count on though was that even Bull could get knocked around by one of those giant hammers, the Avvar’s maul nearly snapping Bull’s own weapon in half with the amount of force it held behind it. Bull didn’t go down but it was enough force to throw him back, and that was all that Avvar had needed.

He charged forward with bloodlust in his eyes and fangs bared to the world. He yelled something about ‘glory for Hakkon’ and there was heat as Dorian probably tried to defend him. Dorian’s hands were ripped away from him and then all of a sudden Adelin had a war hammer smashing into his already spasming chest, throwing him back those last few feet so that he went sailing over the edge of the wall to the basin floor a good fifteen or twenty feet below him. He would scream if he had room enough for air but it was getting harder to breathe and his cheeks and neck and the front of his clothes kept getting wetter and redder every time he coughed. He wished he would pass out but if he were honest this was far from the worst pain he had endured in his time as Inquisitor. It was nothing compared to when he first received the anchor, or when he had been sideswiped by his first dragon, but  _ Maker _ that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

He wanted to see Dorian again.

He got his wish a second later.

He pushed a potion to his lips again- uncorked, this time, thankfully- and he swallowed some of it and coughed up the rest but at least he was able to breathe a little and hear a little now.

“Bull, I don’t-”

“Don’t worry. We just need to get him back to camp. Here, take the kid.”

“Pulsing, pounding, pressing in- pain in my chest but not from the hammer. I can’t end it like this. I can’t let him watch me die. I’m-”

“Cole, don’t do that right now. Adelin, stop that. You’re going to be fine. Bull says you’ll be fine. Just stay awake, alright?”

“...He wants me to tell you he loves you, just in case.”

He couldn’t help the groan that escaped his bloody lips when Bull lifted him off the ground where he’d lain dying. He also couldn’t help it if he threw up blood and whatever his last meal was, grimacing at the taste and making some sort of pained mewl when his stomach acid flowed by the cuts inside his mouth. Dorian took his hand gently, he knew that much, and Adelin squeezed back with as much strength as he could muster, but that took focus and right now all focus needed to be spent on breathing and not dying.

The walk back to camp was not the smoothest one. Adelin felt tears flowing from his eyes and sliding back into his wine-red hair- he didn’t have the energy to hold his head up and so he let himself drape across Bull’s arms like cloth, eyes half-rolled back into his skull, heavy with their desire to close but kept open by little more than the elf’s stubbornness. His mouth was no longer actively dripping blood but every now and then he would cough and pain would sear itself across the back of his throat and Dorian would be somewhere nearby with a cloth from Maker-knows-where trying to wipe whatever he could away. The walk could have taken an hour or a year and Adelin wouldn’t know the difference, all he knew was that he couldn’t close his eyes, or he might not get to open them again. 

Corypheus may be dead but that didn’t mean he didn’t have still have shit to do with his life!

The whole time they walked Dorian never let go of his hand. Even when Adelin’s fingers went limp and numb, Dorian held on and let a delicate stream of warmth flow from his fingers to Adelin’s, moved it through his arm and his chest and everywhere else so that his body could focus on healing and not heating for the moment. A steady stream of curses and praises left Dorian's lips as they walked, sometimes praising the Maker and sometimes cursing him, but the moments when he stopped babbling were the moments when Adelin’s eyes came the closest to sliding closed, and he wasn’t willing to risk anything changing. If that meant he was saying children's nursery rhymes by the time they got back to camp… well, if Adelin could survive a fall and a beating like that, Dorian was reasonably sure his pride could take the blow.

Medics scurried about and healers whisked them all into the largest tent. Cole went outside and Bull went to check on him as soon as Adelin was in a bed- he didn’t want to be in the way, after all. But Dorian stayed. By the time Adelin was out of danger, out of his armor- which had apparently been part of the problem, the metal had buckled and pressed in on the elf’s chest- out of trouble, and, most importantly, fast asleep. His breathing had a slight hitch to it and every once in awhile he would still cough, but he was safe. He was safe and he was warm (thanks to Dorian) and he was… He would be alright. The Tevinter mage leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the ginger’s brow once all the healers had left.

He stayed by his side all through the night. And every night after that, just to be sure.


End file.
